Only mediocrity escapes criticism.

- John Steinbeck

I wonder why progress looks so much like destruction.

- John Steinbeck

There are several kinds of love. One is a selfish, mean, grasping, egotistical thing which uses love for self-importance. This is the ugly and crippl…

- John Steinbeck

It’s a hard thing to leave any deeply routine life, even if you hate it.

- John Steinbeck

The free exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world.

- John Steinbeck

Books are the best friends you can have; they inform you, and entertain you, and they don't talk back.

- John Steinbeck

To be alive at all is to have scars.

- John Steinbeck

Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.

- John Steinbeck

If you want to destroy a nation, give it too much - make it greedy, miserable and sick.

- John Steinbeck